Yesterday the Webmonday Silicon Valley took place, i.e. the Webmontag web 2.0 Expo edition. I do not exactly know, how many people were there, I suppose around 40 all in all. It took place in Citizen Space, a co-working place in San Francisco’s city centre I have already used on previous trips, both as a place to get some work done and as the place where the previous webmondays were held, which I (Berlin Partner co)sponsored. There were organized by Tim Bonnemann, the inventor of the Webmontag concept.
I very much enjoy Webmondays, be it in Berlin or here in SanFran, you get to network easily and the presentations are always short and to the point, letting you make the maximum out of your time. Yesterday Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) and Berlin Partner presented their services for investors expanding to Germany. Metaversum showed their 3D World Twinity and the Fraunhofer HHI showcased their video retrieval technologies, they are all going to be at the expo too. I found doodle, a Swiss company very interesting. They allow you to solve the problem of coordinating meeting or conf call times with people using different calenders. They have an outlook integration and opend their API recently (it goes on for 2 more weeks, you can win a trip to Switzerland) and I suppose to see even more of them in the future.
A project I will check out for the blogs I am contributing to is apture. They seem to have found an amazing way to improve the usability (surfing experience) of websites, integrating multimedia to your site in a very easy to use way. They are interesting for bloggers and publishers alike. Check out the lower part of their site to experience it. It’s great! There was camera running, I hope to be able to show some video footage soon.

Berlin will be present for the 3rd time in April 2009 at the web 2.o Expo in the Silicon Valley. Berlin Partner organized a booth for the capital region, which they will use together with the economic development agency of Brandenburg ZAB to market to international companies for an expansion to Berlin and Brandenburg i.e. Germany and Europe. Additionally Solidground and Ralf Otto Steuerberatung offer their services for a market entry in Europe to companies willing to expand.
Solidground ist specialised in consulting and business development, particularly for German-American projects and Ralf Otto Tax Consultants is specialised in helping international clients get advice and support in all matters of tax and finance.
At the booth Berlin will be presented in the virtual realm as well. Metaversum will show their project twinity, a 3-dimensional virtual Berlin, which you can explore with your avatar. As opposed to Second Life Metaversum counts on connecting the real world with the virtual one as close as possible, i.e. using real names and show Berlin as it is. The Berlin company works on models of Singapur and London as well.
During that week many events will take place in and around the Moscone Center – I would like to mention one particularly: the Silicon Valley Webmontag – Webmonday (on a tuesday ;-). I will report from there.